Saturday 24 May 2014

Go and Learn What This Means: I Desire Honesty, Not Christianity


I am a Christian.

I love Christians.

I have great hope for the Christian church.

But throughout my journey one thing has repeatedly frustrated me. And that is the tendency among Christians to value the identity marker of “Christian” over basic truth and honesty.

Oh sure, we’ve got the “truth.” But that truth revolves around theological realities about how one secures salvation or lives the Christian life that must be defended and upheld no matter what, along with the institutions that contain those same realities. In other words, the politics of protecting theological truth turn that truth into a set of ideological markers, showing us who is in and who is out. Who is totally Christian and who is definitely not.

What matters most is to be found in, to not cross the ideological line. What matters most is to fight those who tamper with the ideology. What matters most is the survival of the “truth” in the midst of political forces that might seek to destroy it.

And in the process of the superficial politicking, the actual truth is nowhere to be found.

I think this is why Jesus said, “Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’” It’s because theological truth is prone to missing the forest for the trees. It’s prone to protecting ideas – institutionalized as rituals – instead of people. It’s prone to the majestic maneuverings of language that seem to prove the point sublimely while missing the point entirely. It’s prone to decrying “positions” in favor of its pure and abstract idea – which is, of course, a position.

Often, a position that harms people.

I’ve come to believe that God desires honesty, not Christianity. Continue reading...

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